Twitter Spaces groans under weight of Ron DeSantis and Elon Musk's egos

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's plan to hold an "historic" US presidential campaign launch on a Twitter Spaces stream went about as well as you'd expect on a platform slowly collapsing under the weight of its former CEO's hubris.

Twitter Spaces, an audio-only streaming service, melted in the face of DeSantis-drawn crowds, with technical glitches leading to minutes of dead air, feedback and hushed whispers exchanged between hosts Musk and fellow PayPal alum David Sacks, and the nervous hum of assistants.

A highlight reel of the disaster posted to Reddit captured some of the most entertaining bits. Favorites include frantic whispers of "now it's quiet" after the microphone feedback cleared, signaling to Sacks it was his time to speak. As it turned out, the entrepreneur didn't get through his introduction before technical issues caused the stream to go dead.

"We've got so many people here ...